John 9: 1 - 41
One of my granddaughters, who was
studying in France, was able to get home this last week. I know she
was hoping to take her exams before she got home, but I haven’t had
a chance to find out. And now that she’s home, she has to
self-quarantine for two weeks. And if she stays in her parent’s
home, that means that the rest of the family has to do the same. But
all in all, it’s good that she’s home.
How things changed in one week. In
our state the restaurants, bars and churches are all closed. We are
all beginning to worry about how long this will be, and what we can
do to prepare for it, assuming we can actually find what we need in
the stores.. And maybe the worst thing for many of us is that our
routines are disrupted. I usually know where I’m going to be and
what I’ll be doing each day of the week. And that’s all
uncertain now, and it seems like time is hanging heavy.
But there is a word for what we are
going through -- apocalypse. That means lifting the veil, showing
what was hidden. And the gospel today is about the same thing.
The apostles see the blind man and to
them he is an object. “Whose sin, his or his parents, made him
blind?” Because something had to cause this, and it’s important
that we know so that we can avoid it. But Jesus says, neither; Jesus
doesn't deny sin, but of course we are all sinners. Jesus implies
that God doesn’t punish people for sins, he doesn’t inflict
blindness, he doesn’t set loose a virus that is rapidly spreading
throughout the world.
And Jesus makes a paste out of spit
and dirt, and puts it in the man’s eyes. I don’t know why he did
this, but it kind of reminds you of God forming Adam out of the dirt.
He then tells the man to go and wash in a specific pool. Up to this
point, Jesus hasn’t promised healing, nor has the man requested it.
But to Jesus he is not an object to be ignored or pitied or tossed a
few coins. Jesus, unlike his apostles, speaks to him and not about
him. To Jesus, he is a fellow human being and maybe this was just
enough for the blind man to trust him. And of course, at the pool
the man can see again.
Jesus restores the man’s
connections. And this current plague should remind us how we are all
connected. We are all interdependent. As the stock market crumbles
and people who wait on tables, who bar tend, who work for churches
and synagogues are sidelined, for many it will be a severe economic
blow. And it will affect many people who depend on the stock market
for their retirement income. And even the wealthiest people will
discover that they can’t isolate themselves.
I think it’s interesting that the
townspeople don’t recognize the man. He isn’t the “blind
beggar” anymore; he looks like everyone else. And his parents,
rather than rejoicing, fear being expelled from the synagogue, and
themselves almost deny their son -- “We do not know,” they say,
“ask him, he’s a grown man”. And of course the Pharisees
actively try to get the man born blind to attribute his healing to
something, anything, else. “Give God the glory,” they say;
because the man has been giving Jesus the glory, and that’s totally
unacceptable. And in the face of this coronavirus, many of us will
hunker down, as they say, and maybe learn nothing from the
experience; maybe, like the Pharisees, we will refuse to recognize
what is being revealed about how fragile our lives are, how human are
those who govern us, how noble are those who work on the front lines
-- not only medical personnel, but grocery store workers, delivery
people, those who keep our lights on and our water clean. And maybe
when this is over we will start to recognize these invisible heroes
as fellow human beings, maybe even more important than our
politicians in keeping our communities orderly and safe..
The blind man starts out by trusting
Jesus, whom he has no reason to trust. As things progress, he keeps
falling back on the fact that at Jesus’ hands he became able to
see. No matter what the authorities say, no matter what they demand,
he can only say, “If this man were not of God, he could not do
anything.” In the story, the blind man’s faith increases in the
face of pressure and adversity, even to the point of being thrown out
of the synagogue. He is rewarded by Jesus revealing to him that he
is Lord, he is the Son of Man promised by Daniel. And that is
perhaps the final point in our apocalypse; what will we learn from
this? How will the plague change us? Will we strengthen our faith?
Because God didn’t cause this plague except in the sense that God
is behind everything that happens. But in God’s world, all that
happens speaks to us, and some of us will listen and learn, others
will not. And we remember Jesus’ words, “I come into this world
for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who
do see might become blind.” .
